Three experiments examined 3- to 11-year-olds' understanding of entropy, asking whether undifferentiated forces, such as the wind or objects being thrown into the air, could create order or disorder in a set of objects. Found that even 4-year-olds were sensitive to asymmetrical effects of such events. Older children applied this principle more…

Four studies explored children's ability to differentiate future distances of events. Findings indicated that 4-year-olds failed to differentiate future distances. Five-year-olds could distinguish events occurring in coming weeks/months from those many months away. Six- through 8-year-olds made more differentiated judgments than younger children…

Two studies explored how mothers and preschoolers talk and reason about events in which biological and nonbiological objects change in size. Analysis of conversations indicated that although mothers discussed events primarily in domain-specific ways when using the term growth, they exhibited some domain blurring in explanations to preschoolers.…